Senior Director, Global Payroll

Job Description

Zendesk is seeking a strategic, hands-on Senior Director of Global Payroll to lead our payroll operations. This is a high-impact, cross-functional leadership role responsible for overseeing a team of payroll professionals spanning the globe.

You will be accountable for ensuring timely, accurate, and compliant payroll processing for thousands of employees while driving process improvements, scaling global operations, and strategically partnering with Finance, HR, Legal, and external vendors to drive business and employee experience outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage a disbursed global payroll team of 10+ professionals across the US, LATAM, APAC, and EMEA

• Oversee end-to-end payroll payroll operations for 20+ global entities, ensuring compliance with local regulations, labor laws, and payroll tax requirements

• Heavy engagement with HR, Finance, Legal, and Compliance to support business needs and strategically shape compensation policies and procedures

• Establish and maintain standardized payroll processes and controls across all regions while balancing local requirements

• Represent Payroll in M&A activities, entity expansions, policy rollouts ensuring seamless integration and execution

• Serve as the subject matter expert and escalation point for complex payroll inquiries and global pay related issues and policies

• Partner with IT teams to optimize integrations between payroll systems and platforms

• Drive global process improvements that scale Zendesk’s growth that reduce manual effort and errors

• Own global reporting, forecasting and analytics providing insight and visibility into payroll costs, and trends

• Prepare and present executive-level reporting on global payroll operations, risks, and strategic initiatives

 

Requirements:

• 15+ years of experience in a global payroll leadership role, preferably in tech or a high growth environment

• Strong expertise in global payroll systems (Workday, Cloudpay, ADP)

• Exceptional people management, cross cultural communication, and stakeholder engagement skills

• Skilled at balancing strategic leadership with operational excellence

#LI-WO1

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $194,000.00-$292,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an